


The burning house

by Kes



Series: Those who do not study history [2]
Category: Underworld (Movies)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 22:12:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kes/pseuds/Kes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Viktor is trapped and doomed by the pattern, and it's his own fault. (Viktor's perspective on the events of the first film and Rise of the Lycans, along with the rest of the Lycan War.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The burning house

What need was there for the study of history, when you had been there yourself? That had been the question he had posed when he’d put a stop to it, desperately trying to scrub himself clean of the ash on his fingertips that had once been a daughter and the bitter bile of the failure of his lycan experiments. They'd accepted it, and so had he.

What need was there for the study of history, when it danced in your blood with the memories of your fellows? What need was there for the study of history, when time and fire and new blood made such a convenient veil for your shame? What need? And in these troubled times of rebuilding, needs were what mattered; so he turned Tannis to correspondence and burned the records the historian couldn't keep safe while he looked for a pretext to exile him.

What need was there to remember that you had sent almost every one of your comrades who had lived through your failure into a fortress and burned it about their ears? Fire as a weapon was two-edged, and he’d chosen it for the purpose. There was never a battle; just death and charred flesh and Kraven clawing his way out of the ashes with a scrap of skin and swearing he’d killed Lucian. What need was there to remember before the time you had raised the vampires anew, brought forth a new crop of them that could never remember your mistakes? They had been so young and so frightened, but so beautifully loyal. So indebted to him. And some of them had just been so… familiar. So he'd woven them into the future, trusting that they could not touch the past, trusting that he could shape the future in his own image.

But the pattern rose about his ears and laid his footsteps out in front of him, so clear now he looked down and remembered. Maybe he would have seen it sooner if he hadn’t buried it so thoroughly, but now it was too late and he’d been led into the same dance. The centuries blurred around him, ruined houses and rotting sewers rising like a fortress into the night, and when he turned Sonja-Selene was holding a sword that reflected the fires of another time. This time his was the other part.

It would be his house that burned.

**Author's Note:**

> (Again, this one was posted to tumblr but moved.)


End file.
